sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method) using findElement(By.className()) through Selenium and Java

Question

When I execute the following code:

driver.findElement(By.className("qview-product-name")).click();

I get the following error

Session ID: d5df6f837164b1738991e8dc09027fe0
*** Element info: {Using=class name, value=qview-product-name}
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Unknown Source)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.http.W3CHttpResponseCodec.createException(W3CHttpResponseCodec.java:187)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.http.W3CHttpResponseCodec.decode(W3CHttpResponseCodec.java:122)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.http.W3CHttpResponseCodec.decode(W3CHttpResponseCodec.java:49)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.HttpCommandExecutor.execute(HttpCommandExecutor.java:158)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.service.DriverCommandExecutor.execute(DriverCommandExecutor.java:83)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:552)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElement(RemoteWebDriver.java:323)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElementByClassName(RemoteWebDriver.java:412)
    at org.openqa.selenium.By$ByClassName.findElement(By.java:389)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElement(RemoteWebDriver.java:315)
    at Logins.bcLogin(Logins.java:140)
    at Exception.main(Exception.java:54)

The webpage I am working on definately contains the following HTML code and I have tried waiting an appropriate amount of time to execute.

<dd class="qview-product-name">
    <span class="note">1 x </span>
                    <a href="Link_here"_blank">Title</a>
            </dd>

I thought I was getting pretty good at locating elements using the various methods, but this has me stumped. Any ideas on how I should go about troubleshooting? Thanks!

Answer 1

There are a couple of things you need to take care of:

• By.className("qview-product-name") refers to the parent <dd> tag and perhaps is not the desired element you want to click. Rather your usecase must be to click on the <a href="Link_here"_blank">Title</a> element.

• As per best practices, while invoking click() you need to induce you need to induce WebDriverWait for the elementToBeClickable() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

• linkText:

  new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.linkText("Title"))).click();
  

• cssSelector:

  new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.cssSelector("dd.qview-product-name a[href='Link_here']"))).click();
  

• xpath:

  new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("//dd[@class='qview-product-name']//a[@href='Link_here' and text()='Title']"))).click();
  

---

Additional Considerations

Ensure that:

• JDK is upgraded to current levels JDK 8u222.
• Selenium is upgraded to current levels Version 3.141.59.
• ChromeDriver is updated to current ChromeDriver v77.0 level.
• Chrome is updated to the current Chrome Version 77.0 level. (as per ChromeDriver v77.0 release notes)
• Clean your Project Workspace through your IDE and Rebuild your project with required dependencies only.
• If your base Web Client version is too old, then uninstall it and install a recent GA and released version of Web Client.
• Take a System Reboot.
• Execute your @Test as non-root user.